Peter Gutmann wrote:
> Nelson B <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> 
>>As reported in
>>http://www.informationweek.com/shared/printableArticle.jhtml?articleID=171200010
>>phishers are now using self-signed certs on their phony web sites, to make
>>the lock icons appear for their web sites, to give the victims a false sense
>>of security. 
> 
>>Of course, the victims must first dismiss a large warnign dialog about
>>the cert coming from an unknown issuer.  But according to the article,
>>many users dismiss that dialog without any understanding of what it means.
> 
> No-one's ever done a rigorous study of this, but there is plenty of anecdotal
> evidence (e.g. the site that had a large red cross and "Invalid Certificate"
> on it that users had to click past before making multi-thousand-dollar
> payments, the bank site with an invalid cert that didn't stop 299 of 300
> users, etc etc) that cert warnings are almost completely ineffective in
> stopping users from going to a web page that they want to visit.  That's why
> the best strategy for this is to treat a cert validation failure in the same
> way as a network error: Users know how to handle this, and it puts pressure on
> site admins to get things right.

Peter,

Please spell out for us exactly what you mean by
> "treat a cert validation failure in the same way as a network error"

Do you mean to treat it as unrecoveragle error, with no option to override?
or ??

Thanks for your feedback.
-- 
Nelson B
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